Learning Japanese - Day 47

I was getting a bit confused by "Mashita" and Deshita"... so I looked it up online and found this great answer.

"~mashita" is past tense & "~deshita" is negative past tense

eg: I ate an apple ringo wo tabemashita (polite past) ringo wo tabeta (plain past)

Because "deshita" is used with a negative verb, the conjugated verb goes like this:

I didn't eat an apple ringo wo tabemasen deshita (polite negative past)

ringo wo tabenakatta (plain negative past)

Some nice people on the learning Japanese reddit hepled me with this!

[–]Lepregamer [score hidden] 55 minutes ago

Normally, あまり is followed by a negative with the meaning of "not really". So if we have 「あまり好きじゃない」it means "Don't really like...". You can use it for verbs too like 「あまりたべません」 to mean "Don't really eat..."

Eg: 「お菓子があまりすきじゃないです。」I don't really like sweets

If your question was to write the correction or something, you have to add the negative.

[–]stilelits [score hidden] 44 minutes ago

I think the negative is implied, isn't it? Like when you say 別に, it's understood that there's a negative verb there.

[–]Dayjaby [score hidden] 25 minutes ago

My guess would be that it's not implied. The word origins from the verb 余る (to remain; to be left over; to be in excess; to be too many) and it can actually be used with non-negative sentences, e.g. あまり暑い (too hot) or even together with ~すぎる: あまり食べすぎるな (Don't eat too much!)

[–]Nicktendowii[S] 1 point 2 minutes ago

Thanks for the quick replies! :)

The question is match the phrase on the left to the verb on the right.

The verbs are these. They were in Romaji but i've written them out in kana... hope they are right?

でした ー be / is

わかりません ー Do not understand

なりました ー Became

しました ー Did

会いました ー Met / Saw

じゃありませんでした ー Well, there was not (ja - well, aru - to be, masen - negative form, deshita - past tense)

書きました ー Wrote

いきませんでした ー Did not go (iki - go, masen - not, deshita - past tense)

買いました ー bought (kai - buy）

Tried putting some translations next to them. please let me know if i got anything wrong there

[–]Nicktendowii[S] 1 point just now

So I guess the answer to that one would be:

あまり好きじゃありませんでした？ Didn't really like?

Looking now at the second part of the sheet I got last week (Time flies! Can't believe i got it a week ago!)

Might have to ask in my lesson tomorrow about this. some of it doesnt make any sense to me, maybe thats because it's in romaji which makes it much harder to understand...

#LearningJapanese